New computer build: Beast6

After crashing and burning on the Samsung 49" monitor, I decided it was time to build a new computer instead to cheer me up.


Review of Current System (Beast2):

The current computer is pretty decked out with a custom water-cooled loop, i7-6700 and a GTX 1080. It has two large radiators and 7 fans, weights about 50 pounds. But it is noisy as hell, so I have to wear headphones to get any sense of immersion. And I have to turn it off just to sleep.

My plan is to keep the existing system in perfect working order so I can sell it to compensate for some of the cost. There are a few parts I want to scavenge from it, like a Samsung pro M.2 drive and similar SSD and the 1000W Titanium EVGA PSU. I was able to get a brand new 750W EVGA PSU to replace it for about $50 (1/6th the cost of the 100w). And I have some older SSD drives sitting in boxes to replace the premium ones.

BTW: I did a bios upgrade while doing this on the older computer and now the computer can sleep just like a laptop. That is awesome, saves noise and power. Wish I knew that from the start.

Goals for new system:

1. Supports my use case of gaming, software development, video capture and editing, blender.
2. Quiet
3. Better video
4. Smaller, the current one takes up too much leg room.
5. No LED’s. I don’t need the light show distraction nor the night light.
6. No water, for space, noise and cost reduction.
7. Some room to grow.
8. Value conscious, not cheap, but certainly not over the top.


The build:

First, the case chosen was a Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 Mini Tower because it was small, has no windows and most importantly has good noise reduction design. It is reasonably priced as well.

Next choice was the i9-7900x CPU and it was a hard one to make. The main contenders were the Ryzen 7, Threadripper and the Intel i9 series. The most impressive for my software development tasks is hands down the threadripper, plus for it has a great power/price ratio. Sadly, it falls way short for games as most games are single threaded. I hope that game engines start getting smarter about using more cores. The Intel I9’s are pretty expensive and have a poor power/price ratio. I waited until all the specs were in before I made a decision. The 7980xe certainly tops the charts with at best a 30% gain (only in massive threading workloads) over the 7900x, at twice the price and double the power usage. It just does not make sense. On top of that, I would have to create another water loop to cool it, which is off the table.

Next was the motherboard, for which there is only one option that fits the CPU and the case. The EVGA x299 micro ATX board.

Next was the heat sink, the part that could make or break the "small" build. The CPU is going to require a significant cooler, more than 120mm closed loop can do. To my surprise, the Noctua NH-D15 out preforms many 240mm closed loop systems. Sadly, it was about 5mm too large to fit in the case. The good news is the Noctua NH-D15S comes in at exactly 5mm shorter and only loses 20W of thermal capacity in the compromise (~220W). It is also well designed to make room for the RAM. Fits like a glove. Also, Noctua is well known for its quiet fans. Hat tip to Nanoxia (case designers) support for preventing from having to try and fail.

Next I chose a 64GB Corsair Dominator kit for the RAM. Mostly because I had lots of trouble between the ASUS motherboard and a G.Skill kit in my previous x99 build.

Finally, in a stroke of luck, ordering the GPU last.. EVGA just released, on the same day, a new 1080 ti elite that supposedly can rival its own Kingpin. We shall see.

I compared this build with others from the popular online PC builders and I am definitely coming in at very significant savings even when compared against lesser hardware options.

The test:


The final parts come in today, so maybe I can get it going tonight. Lots of things can go wrong. One thing I could not get a grasp on ahead of time is if the case will ventilate well enough. Wish me luck.

 

It's been a long night! But, as luck would have it the job is done and it meets all the goals I stated for it including being very quiet. In order to hear it at all everything else has to be turned off including the central air. Even under full load it is just a whisper.

Here are a couple boring photos. My goal was to have a plain looking system with the LED's off. I even went into the video card setting and turned off the lighting.



I bench-marked for while and it was smoking fast and I have not even overclocked it. I did finally start overclocking and what I found was a pretty unnoticeable change in the single threaded benchmarks as the turbo mode automatically over-clocks two cores on demand. I doubt there will be many cases that overclocking would actually make a difference for normal use and instead just drives up the power and the heat. At least for now, I am not going to over-clock it.

It is much lighter than the previous one, guessing 25-30 lbs.

It's a nice quiet beast.

 

Nice, I like the top power control, and a power supply in the bottom of the case.
A good tight fit as well.

 

Looks like it will be great.

Personally, I prefer a full ATX case just because it has more space for air circulation and with a larger motherboard there is some space between components. When you have a mini-ATX, everything is compact and close together and that can make the heat from one component (ie. GPU) start to heat up other components that are close to it. And, since they are almost touching, less cool air can travel between them to cool them off.

But if you wanted it smaller for a specific purpose, I understand that completely. Also, you didn't skimp on the cooling system you do have, so hopefully it will be powerful enough to keep your rig cool enough.

Good luck!

 

Thanks! I agree about the case size consideration. I definitely rethought it more than a few times and I was concerned about case ventilation and everything fitting. This seems to be flowing well and I was lucky to get it all to fit. I will keep my fingers crossed.

 

Very NICE! I am with you in the "avoid water cooling" mentality. Air cool all the way!

 

The new"er" self contained water cooling solutions for CPUs are really nice/easy no maintenance solutions. Personally have an H-50 from Corsair that works like a champ. Can't beat it on sale for $50 too. ;-)

 

Very nice setup.

I just recently built a new system myself, I've been extremely happy with the build.

Aside from the fact that once I fire up most games, it starts to heat up the CPU and... suddenly it sounds like I have a jet engine running under my desk.